March 2009

March 28, 2009

I intended to post today about creating a program to take control of your health. Then I remembered that I had failed to tell you how to find your best dose of vitamin D. I have a tendency to assume that if I know something everybody knows it. That assumption has gotten me into trouble many times. I'm glad I caught it this time before it was too late.

Finding your best dose of vitamin D. is vitally important and also tricky. It's tricky because people process vitamin D very differently. For example, when Genevieve takes vitamin D 4000 IU daily her blood level of vitamin D is over 100 ng (nanograms). When I take 6000 IU daily my blood level is 56 ng. The only way you can tell if you have your optimum amount is by a blood test.

The optimum amount for healthy people is 60 to 70 ng. The optimum amount for sick people, including those with chronic disorders, is 80 ng. Yes, I know that these blood levels are FAR above those recommended by conventional medicine. I encourage you to go to http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/and find the citations in Dr. Cannell’s newsletters on the scientific literature supporting these levels. You may also come across his comment that in light of extensive current research, the decision to reduce the recommended children's dose of vitamin D to 200 IU was idiotic. In addition to being an authority on vitamin D, Dr. Cannell is also an experienced psychiatrist, well qualified to diagnose idiocy when he encounters it. This same research supports a children's dose of 1000 IU for every 25 pounds of body weight.

I can tell you from my clinical experience that these doses and blood levels work far better than the 30 ng considered optimum in conventional medicine.

Because the way body processes vitamin D varies so much from one individual to another it is necessary to test for blood levels. The testing itself needs some discussion because there is some confusion about which test to order and some of the tests are inaccurate. Since this is such an important issue, I will address it in my next blog. The risk of toxicity occurs above 150 ng.

No, I haven't forgotten about outlining the program for taking control of your health but vitamin D is important enough to deserve the full treatment before we move on.

March 26, 2009

When I posted my most recent blog I was uncertain about whether to write more about vitamin D or to suggest an outline or plan for taking control of your health. I asked for comments on this. It was unanimous: More about vitamin D! I agree. When I get around to publishing the outline, vitamin D will be at the top because I know of no other one substance that does so many health supportive things so well, so simply, so economically, so safely, and so comfortably.

The research on vitamin D is exploding. Evidence is piling up that vitamin D is useful in preventing many diseases and n treating some major ones including autism, depression, multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease, liver disease, autoimmune thyroiditis, and the list goes on. This does not mean that the right amount of vitamin D will cure all these conditions every time. It won't. It does mean that vitamin D will evidently cure some of these conditions some of the time and in some cases make other treatments work where they would not otherwise. When a treatment is safe, economical, comfortable, simple, and often effective, it seems to me negligent not to use it.

Probably the best way to access this information is to go to the home page and navigate to "Newsletter Archives." Start with the most recent newsletter. That will keep you busy for a while and may blow your mind. The things I like best about the newsletter are the meticulously documented scientific research and the author's razor sharp, dry wit. Of course, you can click on the navigation bar what ever condition interests you and go straight to that.

After some people read some of this information they are probably going to have comments about it. I would appreciate their posting their comments by clicking "Comment" at the end of this post. I believe we can have some interesting and lively discussion on this critically important topic.

Now, in my next blog I may just get around to outlining the "Take Control of Your Health" program.

March 24, 2009

In the past 20 years I have prescribed this program for over 1000 patients. Most of them wouldn't do it because they thought that was just too much vitamin C. Probably 150 or 200 actually did this vitamin C protocol and most of them were very pleased at the result. For example, I recently saw a patient in his 40s who has been taking optimum dose C for over a year. He told me that he had been under more stress in the past year than at any other time in his life and that for the first time in years he had not been sick once during the year. For years prior to that he has had several significant illnesses every year. He was quite impressed with vitamin C.

A woman who has been my patient for 30 years takes 30 to 40 g per day. She is chemically sensitive and has severe allergies, but functions very well so long if she takes the vitamin C. She has become a specialist in her own health care and has gained an extremely valuable degree of independence from the American disease treatment system. I now hear from her only once or twice a year. She has her three children on optimum dose vitamin C. They, too, stay remarkably healthy.

Children can start with vitamin C 100 mg, dose four times a day, and increase the dose by 100 mg each hour until they start getting a little excess gas, then reduced the dose by 100 mg. and continue to take it four times daily. If they start getting sick remember to dose every hour while awake and increase the dose by 100 mg each time until they start getting excess gas. The dose may be much larger than when they are healthy. Use only pure ascorbic acid: no chewable or mixtures with other substances.

After 20 years of seeing most people ignore this excellent, cost-effective, safe way of improving their health, I feel some understanding of what Bob was singing about.

Is there anyone who should not do this protocol? I do not recommend it for anyone who has kidney disease. Vitamin C is excreted through the kidneys; people with kidney disease may not be able to do this satisfactorily and the vitamin C might aggravate kidney damage.. People who form kidney stones should do this only under the supervision of a physician who understands the protocol and is prepared to do urine tests to see if vitamin C causes production of oxalate, which is a component of some kidney stones. Any inflammatory disease of the digestive system, such as peptic ulcer or ulcerative colitis, should be corrected before using the vitamin C protocol. The protocol should be discontinued if it produces abdominal pain.

The vitamin C can be a useful part of the treatment of some gastrointestinal disorders but you would need to be under the care of a physician skilled in the use of vitamin C. You may be able to find such a physician by going to http://www.acamnet.org.

So now you know two proven, reliable ways to stop an infection. Sometimes I do both when I feel myself starting to get sick but most of the time now I use the vitamin D protocol. It's a lot simpler and easier but if I ever feel it's not working I will immediately reach for the vitamin C also.

In my next post I will either tell you more of the powerful health enhancing benefits of vitamin D or start to give you a master plan you can use to take control of your own health and reduce your dependence on the disease treatment system. I don't know yet which it will be but I will soon find out. If you have a preference please comment and let me know.

March 22, 2009

In my previous blog I wrote about vitamin C being a threshold treatment. Below the threshold nothing happens. At the threshold, your symptoms usually decrease 50 to 90%. A little above he threshold you get a lot of gas and/or your bowels get loose. Don't worry if you get a little diarrhea. It doesn't last long: it's about like having taken a laxative. The bowel flush brings its own detoxifying benefit.

The question that comes up for most people at this point in the discussion is, "Isn't it dangerous to take such large doses of vitamin C?"

My response is: everything is toxic at some level including air and water. Too much water kills people by the hundreds of thousands every year. Too little water, known as dehydration, also kills a lot of people. Yet, there is an amount of water that is optimal for good health. The operational question is how to find what that optimum amount is. In the case of vitamin C, the body wisdom knows the right amount. As stated in the previous blog, it will tell you plainly what that is. And now you know how to listen for the answer.

You may still be wondering, "But is taking that much vitamin C dangerous? Is my body really smart enough to know what the right amount is?" I think so. For the past 25 years I have been taking the amount of vitamin C my body told me I needed each day. That is usually between 20 and 25 g. Sometimes, when I am sick the dose goes above 50 g. My personal best is 99 g (that's 99,000 mg) in 24 hours when I had a really severe case of flu. If taking that much vitamin C is going to harm me it's taking a long time to show up. Occasionally I have tried reducing that does to see if I could feel and function as well with less. Each time, the answer was "No" until the last few months when I have been working on improving the balance in my body’s electrical system. Just recently I have been able to reduce my daily vitamin C dose from 24 g. to 18 g. and have felt and functioned as well or better. Just wait until we get to the electrical system balancing discussion!

My experience over the past 25 years is that it is far more dangerous not to take optimum dose vitamin C than it is to take it.

I'll wrap this discussion up in the next blog which will include my advice on who should NOT take optimum dose vitamin C.

Today we are continuing the discussion about ways you can take control of your health by gaining the ability to stop infections. I have written about how to use vitamin D to stop infections. Years before I knew vitamin D could do that, my patience and I were stopping infections with vitamin C. This was not with a few hundred milligrams of vitamin C: It was with OPTIMUM doses of vitamin C. That is the amount of vitamin C your body needs to do its job most effectively (including stopping infection). That can be up to 20,000 to 40,000 mg per day. How to know how much to take? Ask your body how much it needs! It will plainly tell you. You just need to know how to listen. Here's how.

At the first sign of an infection take vitamin C 1000 mg (1 g). This must be a vitamin C as pure ascorbic acid crystals. Do not try to use any of vitamin C that has had anything added to the pure ascorbic acid crystals. You can take the crystals as a powder dissolved in water or in 1000 mg capsules. The vitamin C solution tastes very sour.

After the first dose, take another dose in one hour. This time, take vitamin C 2 g (2000 mg). Continued to take vitamin C each hour while awake increasing the dose by 1 g perdose until you start getting excessive gas or your bowels get loose. This means that you have slightly exceeded the amount of vitamin C your body needs at the time. The excess amount stays in your gut and gets fermented by bacteria and yeast into carbon dioxide. At this point you will probably notice that your symptoms have decreased by 50 to 75%. It may take a dose of 5 to 10 g to produce this effect but the amount is highly variable from one person to another. You have now used what I call the William Blake principle: "You never know what enough until you know what is more than enough."

As soon as the gas or loose bowel movements subside, take another dose of vitamin C one or 2 g smaller than the dose that produced the symptoms. That does should control any symptoms that have begun to come back. Continue to take that amount of vitamin C as often as symptoms start to return so that the symptoms are kept at half their usual intensity or less. You will probably be dosing every two or three hours while awake for several days. As you recover, you will need less and less vitamin C, will absorb less, and will have to keep reducing the dose in order to avoid offending your digestive system. When healthy, the optimum dose for most people is 6 to 10 grams per day. If you take your optimum dose while well it will probably be a long time before you need to do this infection protocol and you will enjoy better energy, mental alertness, and freedom from aches and pains.

If you use this protocol when you start getting sick, instead of being sick you will probably be what Dr. Robert Cathcart calls "unsick." That means you can tell something is going on and you don't feel as well as usual but you definitely are not sick the way you would be sick if you weren't taking the vitamin C.

Dr. Cathcart, a medical consultant to one of the

Colorado

ski patrols, pioneered this optimum dose vitamin C treatment for infections. The members of the ski patrol were out on the slopes swigging their bottles of the vitamin C solution and doing their job instead of being at home in bed with the flu.

In the next blog I will have some further suggestions and precautions, so don't try this until after you read the next blog.

March 18, 2009

Today we are continuing the discussion about ways you can take control of your health by gaining the ability to stop infections. I have written about how to use vitamin D to stop infections. Years before I knew vitamin D could do that, my patience and I were stopping infections with vitamin C. This was not with a few hundred milligrams of vitamin C: It was with OPTIMUM doses who vitamin C. That is the amount of vitamin C your body needs to do its job (including stopping infection). That can be up to 20,000 to 40,000 mg per day. How to know how much to take? Ask your body how much it needs! It will plainly tell you. You just need to know how to listen. Here's how.

At the first sign of an infection take vitamin C 1000 mg (1 g). This must be a vitamin C as pure ascorbic acid crystals. Do not try to use any of vitamin C that has had anything added to the pure ascorbic acid crystals. You can take the crystals as a powder dissolved in water or in 1000 mg capsules. The vitamin C solution tastes very sour.

After the first dose, take another dose in one hour. This time, take vitamin C 2 g (2000 mg). Continued to take vitamin C each hour while awake increasing the dose by 1 g perdose until you start getting excessive gas or your bowels get loose. This means that you have slightly exceeded the amount of vitamin C your body needs at the time. The excess amount stays in your gut and gets fermented by bacteria and yeast into carbon dioxide. At this point you will probably notice that your symptoms have decreased by 50 to 75%. It may take a dose of 5 to 10 g to produce this effect but the amount is highly variable from one person to another. You have now used what I call the William Blake principle: "You never know what enough until you know what is more than enough."

As soon as the gas or loose bowel movements subside, take another dose of vitamin C one or 2 g smaller than the dose that produced the symptoms. That does should control any symptoms that have begun to come back. Continue to take that amount of vitamin C as often as symptoms start to return so that the symptoms are kept at half their usual intensity or less. You will probably be dosing every two or three hours while awake for several days. As you recover, you will need less and less vitamin C, will absorb less, and will have to keep reducing the dose in order to avoid offending your digestive system. When healthy, the optimum dose for most people is 6 to 10 grams per day. If you take your optimum dose while well it will probably be a long time before you need to do this infection protocol and you will enjoy better energy, mental alertness, and freedom from aches and pains.

If you use this protocol when you start getting sick, instead of being sick you will probably be what Dr. Robert Cathcart calls "unsick." That means you can tell something is going on and you don't feel as well as usual but you definitely are not sick the way you would be sick if you weren't taking the vitamin C.

Dr. Cathcart, a medical consultant to one of the

Colorado

ski patrols, pioneered this optimum dose vitamin C treatment for infections. The members of the ski patrol were out on the slopes swigging their bottles of the vitamin C solution and doing their job instead of being at home in bed with the flu.

In the next blog I will have some further suggestions and precautions, so don't try this until after you read the next blog.

March 16, 2009

Take charge of my own health? WHY would I want to do that? That's what I pay my DOCTOR and my HOSPITAL to do!

Well, if you can still afford to pay your doctor and your hospital and your drug bill, congratulations! Millions of people in this country can't. There is a line from an old song: "If life were a thing that money could buy then the rich would live and the poor would die." That's still true in the absolute sense but there is now more than ample evidence that the rich live longer and the poor die sooner--and suffer more. If you are rich, or can still at least pay the doctor, the hospital, and your drug bill, do you have a problem with the rich living longer and the poor dying sooner? John Donne, 500 years ago, got it that we are all so interconnected that what happens to one person happens to everyone to one degree or another. "Send not to see for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee." Now it seems that many people are getting this insight. So a lot of people may now be having a problem with the situation in which the rich live longer and the poor die sooner and suffer more. A lot of people may be ready or nearly ready to change that.

If this sounds crazy to you, let me see if I can bring it closer to home. What could be wrong with putting your doctor in charge of your health? That's not just what you paid him for; that's what he's trained to do. That's true, but there's a problem. According to the AARP magazine, July/August 2008, Americans spend$500 BILLION annually on unnecessary medical treatment. If that doesn't bother you, how about this: 30,000 Medicare recipients dieevery year as a result of unnecessary medical treatment. That's just Medicare recipients, who are by no means a majority of people receiving so-called health care in this country. Who knows what the toll really is? Do you know any way other than taking charge of your own health and that you can reduce your risk of joining those 30,000 Medicare recipients who die each year as a result of unnecessary for medical treatment?

If you are not totally comfortable with all of this you might be interested in knowing what you can do about it. Actually, you can do quite a lot. In fact, there is so much you can do that one of my challenges in writing this blog is knowing where to start. I'll be posting about a number of these things in subsequent blogs. If you use enough of these things you can probably reduce your dependence on the disease treatment system by at least 75%.

Protecting yourself against infection is one of the most important parts of taking charge of your own health.I know three proven ways to do this. In my previous blog I told you about using vitamin D to stop infection. Years before I knew vitamin D can do that, my patients and I were preventing and stopping infections with vitamin C. In the next blog I will tell you exactly how to do that. You will probably be astonished!

March 14, 2009

The purpose of this blog is to provide you with actionable information that will empower you to take control of your health and free yourself from the dysfunctional disease treatment system which is increasingly exclusive, dangerous, demeaning, disempowering, and unaffordably expensive for millions of people and for the United States government. You don't believe that? I'll be telling you what the director of the Government accounting office said about it.

To take control of your health, you must be able to stop infections. The use of the correct dose of vitamin D. will usually do this quicker, more economically, more reliably, easier, safer, and more comfortably than any other method I know. I have been using this method for over a year and continue to find it works better than any other method I have ever used.

Here's how: at the first sign of an infection take vitamin D 1000 IU per pound of body weight each day for three days. If you weigh if you weigh 150 pounds, you take 150,000 units each day for three days. By the third day you'll probably be free of any symptoms or at least they will be much milder than usual.

Here's how it worked for Ronald, a 73-year-old retired executive, who consulted me on the advice of a physician friend of his for advice on how he could extend his healthspan and delay the effects of aging. There were, of course, many things that Ronald could do and we talked about them. One of the more important things was to avoid getting sick with an infection. Infections, particularly the flu and pneumonia, are not friends of people in their 70s. Before long, several people in Ronald's family got colds that went into bronchitis. Ronald, too, started getting sick, but took his vitamin D 200,000 IU daily for three days. In three days he was symptom-free. The rest of the family recovered in about three weeks. About two months later another bout of colds and bronchitis started through the family. Same thing again: Ronald took his vitamin D and didn't get sick. This time the family noticed that he was the only one who had not been sick with these respiratory infections. They then decided that they all wanted to take vitamin D.

Vitamin D is not the only thing you must know about and use skillfully if you are to declare your independence from the disease treatment system. However, vitamin D is probably the most important one thing you need to know about and use because it does so many things so well at so little expense. The other thing, also a natural substance, normally present in the body and necessary for health, is thyroid hormone, both T-3 and T4. I intend to be writing about thyroid hormone soon, but before that I would like to tell you where you can get excellent very interesting information about vitamin D, what all it does, and how to use it. In subsequent posts I will tell you about some of the more important additional uses.

March 12, 2009

I am activating this blog for three reasons. First, I believe we in this country are in a mess, probably the worst in our history. Second, I know some things we can do to respond to that part of the mess that is our disease treatment system. Third, it is give back time for me and part of what I want to give is what I've learned in 50 years of practicing medicine about what people can do to take charge of and to improve their own health.

In this blog I will be saying things that some people will think are wrong. Some of them may be. All I have to go on are my perceptions and my experience. As I go along, I will give many of my sources for the controversial things.

The mess we are in appears to me the convergence of several forces including but not limitedto: a collapsing economy and a deep recession, accelerating climate change, a broken disease treatment system, a Congress apparently still heavily under the influence of powerful financial forces that want to maintain the status quo that brought us the economic collapse in the first place, the greatest national debt we have ever experienced and plans to greatly increase it, and the lack of a demonstrated willingness on our part as individuals to take the action we must take to surmount these challenges.

The mess in the disease treatment system (it's called a healthcare system but it actually isn't) is that it is exorbitantly and unaffordably expensive, grossly inefficient, out of reach of millions of people in this country, and dangerous. According to whose figures you believe, the unintended effects of medical treatment are the first or fourth leading cause of death in the

United States

. Over 100,000 people die every year of adverse reactions to drugs correctly prescribed and taken. Many more than that have severe reactions to prescription drugs, often necessitating hospitalization. According to a report in the AARP magazine, 30,000 Medicare recipients die each year as a result of unnecessary medical treatments.

Even if you can afford to access the disease treatment system you may often be better off to avoid it. The most elegant way to do that is not get sick in the first place. If you don't achieve that, there are often natural interventions that you can use on your own to resolve your problem. This is what I will be addressing in this blog. I can tell you about these things because I have practiced medicine for over 50 years and in the last 30 I have sought out, used, and taught my patients to use many natural interventions. I'll be writing about the best of these. We will start with safe, natural, and effective ways not to get sick with infections.

This blog is in the educational, not the medical, model. I will not be prescribing for you or taking medical responsibility for you. I will be telling you what usually works in various situations, giving you the opportunity to try these things if you choose to. If you choose to try an intervention that I write about and you wish to comment or ask a question in this blog on your experience, I intend to respond to your comment or question. If you wish medical consultation, you may contact me through my website, www.owoodardmd.com.

It is now give back time for me because I have been incredibly blessed in so many ways in the 76 years I have been on this earth. I am deeply grateful. I believe Einstein was right when he said, "It is every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it."